maxcelcat

My brain is odd. I often have very weird dreams, lately they've usually been about trying to leave somewhere, then wondering why I took my old Subaru station wagon to Cambodia with me...

Last night's was the weirdest. I dreamed I was hanging out with Stephen Hawking. We were just doing stuff, not having any particularly illuminating conversations or anything.

We decided to head out somewhere, so I helped lever his (surprisingly light) wheel chair through the back door of a Z3 class tram (yes, I can tell you what kind of a tram it was because the dream was detailed and I'm dorky enough to know my tram models). As we travelled, lots more folks got on the tram, and I got squeezed away from where Stephen was parked. Eventually I got off the tram without him, then wondered where he'd gotten to on the tram network, and if we'd made plans to meet up somewhere.

My main concern was that he was out alone knowing nothing about the tram system, and not having a ticket!

So if you find a frail and lost physics professor out there, let me know...

Saturday, April 21st, was International Independent Record Store Day. I got excited about this in a bigger way that usual, partly because I feel a need to get some new music, and also because of a certain nostalgia about how we used to buy and discover music.

I confess I'm one of those who is causing the death of the record store. I really like music, but of late I've routinely bought albums off eBay or digitally online, even from iTunes when I can't avoid it. My complete collection of MP3s (and FLAC and ogg and the like) numbers about 35,000 tracks now. My tastes are fairly specific and sometimes quite obscure - anyone else heard of, say, the Slugfuckers? Coa? And also diverse, from Ani DiFranco to John Zorn via early Einstürzende Neubauten and James Brown! So I find I rarely listen to the radio and have struggled in the past to find things I really wanted in an actual store. I also have poor impulse control, so frequently I would hear about a band and inside of five minutes be buying their stuff online.

But this year, I realised that I needed some new music, that my tastes have become ridiculously inclusive, although still not the stuff that gets played on the radio, and that we need record stores. And that several had opened in the northside of town that I'd never been to.

Retailing is struggling in Australia, but record stores are struggling more than most. The market has changed, technology has changed, and it's nerds like me who are partly to blame.

I made a list of all the stores I wanted to visit, concentrating on stores I've never been to or rarely get to, because they're on the wrong side of town, south of the river. Then I made this also map, a huge all-day loop around town visiting about ten stores! Then it all went to shit, my cat was sick so the middle of my day I had to stop and take him to the vet.

And then my day started sadly. The first two places I tried to visit before having, Trash Parlour in West Brunswick and Round and Round records in Brunswick were both closed. Clearly the info on the Record Store Day website was dated...



Round and Round used to be down on Sydney Road. Looking around, I came across a place called Title, which turned out to be quite good. I picked up a CD by a band called Essendon Airport.



At that point I went racing across to Thornbury looking for a place called Thornbury Records. I totally got the address wrong, but instead stumbled into a place called The Music Jungle.


The chap with the grey hair was playing guitar outside. I'd been past this store before, and it turned out to be something of a delight. I had to physically restrain myself from buying a wad of vinyl by The Last Poets, and a 12" single of... this!


At that point I had to drag my kitty to the vet.

Turned out has a slightly infected ear, poor thing.

After rendering Marvin home, I finally started on my journey south. I popped into the White Rabbit Record Bar in Kensington.

Which also has food much to my delight. Caught up with recumbenteer briefly, and picked up a DVD of George Clinton and P-Funk!

Hopped on Citylink, realising too late that my sister's car which I was driving didn't have an etag *slaps head*. Made it to Greville Records, a store I like a lot, but which I haven't been to in at least five years. When I told the proprietor that I bought records on eBay, he did this!


Around the corner I stumbled upon a place called Obese Records (I was going to post a link, but their website does something of which I don't approve - plays music!), which specialised in Hip-Hop and the like, and also sold an extensive range of spray paint!

I was pleased to encounter quite a fat guy working there, their name does not lie :-)

By this stage, it was approaching 5.30PM, so I rushed literally around the corner to a place called Licorice Pie Records, a place that sells only vinyl. I picked up three vinyl albums, and again had to physically restrain myself from buying loads more. I don't even know if my record player actually works!


And then finally I made my way home. My original plan to visit about ten stores hadn't quite happened, and I'd also managed to visit two stores that weren't on my list at all. However, they both turned out to be excellent discoveries. My eventual haul, which trust me could have been MUCH larger, looked like this:

Three 12" singles by Foetus, eight assorted CDs, including two by James Brown, and one double album for Deb - The Best of Burlesque! - and a DVD.

I had a great time. I made a list of things to look out for, thinking I'd struggle to find anything. Not so - only James Brown was on my list, the rest of these were just fortunate finds. In a few months, when my bank balance has recovered, I might do another small tour, visit some of the places I didn't make it to, restock with even more new music.

BTW, as is probably obvious, Amanda is heavy user of Twitter and the internets in general. This is way more interesting than some of my favourite bands who disappear for years at a time, giving no indications to their fans what they are up to or even when they're playing.

For example, one of my favourite bands, Snog, who hail from my home town, have a website that lists their tour dates from 2006 and have never had a mailing list. Even their myspace page hasn't been updated since last year.

Contrast this with Amanda Palmer, who must tweet at least 50 times a day, including pictures like this:


She even retweeted me the other day (warning, this tweet contains a picture of my armpit!)

OK, that's enough pathetic fanboy for one day :-)

(Belated blogging this, I know.)

I should explain first who Amanda Palmer is (her blog is also echoed here afplj). She is one half of the "Brechtian punk cabaret" act the Dresden Dolls. I first got into them because of this song:

which I heard played from a bike stereo whilst on a birthday ride for recumbenteer - as you do.

Cut to this year. Amanda more or less moved to Melbourne for three months to record an album. We first saw her new years eve (just after I proposed to Deb - yay!) at a party in an arts space in Kensington - she emerged from a cake at Midnight and we got to see rather more of her than we expected!!!!!


Soon afterwards, the Dresden Dolls reformed for a brief tour of the Australia, so I finally got to see them live for the first time. They were fantastic, really energetic, and far less shambolic than her solo shows.

And the next day... Deb bumped into Brian from the dolls on Brunswick street! They'd chatted for a bit when Deb said to him "you look a lot like Brian Viglione of the Dresden Dolls", he said "Yeah, that's me, I came over to chat to you because you're wearing a tshirt from the gig last night!"

Then in February and March, Amanda was joined in Melbourne by her new band, the grand theft orchestra. They retreated into a rehearsal space and soon afterwards to a studio to record.


At the same time they did no less than five shows at the Northcote Social Club. Deb and I made it to (only) two of these gigs. They were more like rehearsals for new material, trying them out in front of an audience.

So in the first three months of this year, I got to see Amanda play in various forms four times. Which is more times than I've seen her play prior to that.

But this doesn't compare to Deb... Deb is a member of the Melbourne Ukulele Collective, who got to play with Amanda Palmer at the Melbourne Ukulele Festival!

Here they are before the gig:

Deb is the one with the green wig on next to Amanda!

Here they are on stage:


Amanda signed Deb's Ukulele, which made Deb so excited she was squeeing at an incredibly high pitch for the at least three days afterwards. See, Amanda Palmer broke my fiancée ;-)

Following on from this post, here is another thing I learned from my two year old niece: Although a chop-stick looks like a straw, it doesn't work like a straw. No matter how hard you try!

I had lunch with my two year old niece today. She was brought along by my dad who's looking after her at the mo while my sister in Canberra.

Things I learned from her today:

• The carpet on my office floor is great for rolling around on


• Disposable chopsticks can be a very entertaining toy


• Her second birthday was a month ago. Every day since she has said "Today is my birfday!"


• Miso soup can be drunk with a straw!

I should hang with two year olds some more, they're very informative ;-)

Well, so much for having a quiet Christmas day!

Our friends Geoff and Tan have been gestating a baby - well, Tan has specifically! Said tot was due on the 19th of December, but was showing no signs of emerging. We'd been quite involved, because my partner Deb had been asked to be their birth support person. This is someone aside from the parents who is there to, well, help out during what is quite a difficult experience.

In preparation, they all worked on a birth plan, and pregancy belly dancing!

At 8.30AM Christmas day, Deb got a call - Tan's water's had broken. This means that the baby will arrive in the next 24 hours.

We went over to their place in the afternoon. Tan looked like this:


Tan wasn't really in labour, she just had cramping at this point. While we pottered around, the heavens opened, and, well, this happened:

That's taken from Tan and Geoff's front porch. I was worried for my car, which you can see parked across the street.

Deb and Tan did some more belly dancing, and that seemed to trigger something! Tan was soon leaning on her fit ball. I could tell something was about to happened, so I took my leave at this point - no point having yet another adult around when the three people who have planned the whole thing were all there.

So what follows was told to me by Deb.

They called the hospital, because the contractions were coming on quite strongly and frequently all of a sudden. The midwife could hear Tan screaming over the phone, and suggested they might want to head there straight away. This was about 5.30PM, barely half an hour after I'd left them.

Geoff, Tan and Deb all piled into the car when yet another storm rolled in and dumped more hail. Tan was taken by surprise by the waves of pain and was screaming the whole way in. By the time they made the hospital, she couldn't walk she was in such a bad way, so they had to get a wheelchair for her. Quickly wheeled into the birthing suite, she was given some pethidine and gas.

(I've seen photographs from this moment, and the parents-to-be are a bit distressed, but looking pretty relieved to be in hospital. It was only 6PM by this stage.)

At this point, I was sitting at home watching Television. Deb SMS'ed me about 8PM, and told me they'd been in hospital for two hours already.

Tan was already dilated 4cm when they turned up, so things were progressing well and relatively quickly. Even so, I watched the clock ticking, thinking the baby wouldn't quite be a christmas baby if they didn't hurry up! Mind you, I've heard horror stories of women being in incredible labour pain for thirty hours or more. My mother likes to remind me it was 48 hours with me!

Tan was on all fours, and in any position she could get comfortable in. Deb held her tight during the major contractions - she was turning purple with the effort, and even bruised Deb's hand she was squeezing so tight.

After only (only!) about eight hours of actual labour, bubs was getting slightly distressed, so the midwives told Tan to just push as hard as she could to get her out. That did the trick, with about six good pushes, little Emma emerged into the world. She started sucking her thumb almost straight away. Clever kid. I do hear they do that in the womb sometimes. She also latched on very quickly and was getting her first meal.

This was bout 12.55AM on the 26th - this morning!

I'd attempted to get some sleep, but had only been lying down for about forty minutes when Deb called to be picked up. The streets were very very quiet at 2AM on Boxing day, and thankfully the rain and hail had stopped. The front door to the hospital was closed. I wandered over to the emergency entrance... for the wrong hospital, I'd wandered into the one next door. Finally I found the correct emergency entrance, and talked my way into the building!

Geoff met me when I got out of the lift, looking tired. I was glad to see him just because it meant I was in the right place. He took me into the birthing suite, were I saw this:

Little Emma was feeding already. She was 3.5 kilos of baby, which is healthy. In fact, the whole thing had gone very very well, textbook even. Even so, sounds like there was lots of screaming, and Deb needed a long shower when she got home.

Deb was in awe. The whole thing had left her bruised, but Tan had done all the real work. She's been a bit dazed since, amazed at what a woman can do. And I got to touch a baby less than two hours old, which was amazing. We both feel a bit protective of her now, having been there right at the start.

We finally fell into bed about 4AM, and slept well into the next day.

Yes folks, it's Nancy Reagun sitting on Mr T's knee. The 80's.... A decade best forgotten...

I went a bit space cadet this morning. I was eating my breakfast.... Then I was staring at my toes for some time... Then Marvin, my cat, was sniffing them, so I stared at him.

I had the weirdest dream! I was in the back garden whipper snippering, and I snipped so hard around the base of the clothes line that I started digging up mud. Then for some reason our bed was in the “sun room”, and my girlfriend was digging out mud from the head of it. I told her if you wanted to garden you should go outside. Then I was out the front of the house with several members of my family, although it was a somewhat different house with a big white front door. For some reason, people kept on thinking it was a restaurant. And about every second pair of people turned out to be burglars, who for some reason kept on wandering up to the front door even though we were watching them. But there were some more folks inside, expecting them, so they caught them and held them for... some reason!

Then I was around the side of the house, and a whole mob of my friends had turned up to a party for me. They were trying to surprise me by turning up all at once with various Star Wars helmets on. But I was there and spotted them before they made it into the house. But I appreciated the effort, and was pleased to see that a woman called Tammy had shown up. Then I was wandering in the back of the house, wondering why someone had parked a NASCAR car there... It turned out to belong to Mario Andretti, who was also there...

Finally I heard a loud banging sound coming from upstairs (turns out this large house had at least two stories). I went up to find out what it was. A teenager with very bushy hair was in his bed, banging his head against the headboard. His parents where there watching him, didn’t seem particularly concerned. I asked what the problem was, and he handed me his maths homework, which looked like Sudoku crossed with a cross word. For some reason I could make sense of it and started helping him with it...

Then I woke up... My brain is odd.

Marvin, my cat, made me laugh and laugh today.

He had to go the the vet for a minor procedure, clearing a blocked tear duct. So I had to leave him there all day. And because he was going to be given an anaesthetic, he wasn't allowed any breakfast. About which he was not happy.

Some background. I'm not Marvin's original owner. I've had him about three and a half years of his ten and a half years. He's very big for a generic domestic short hair, 5.5 kilos, which is bigger than some terriers. So he has big teeth and big claws to go with his muscular bulk. Most of the time he's fine, but even a playful bite from him will draw blood! And when he really doesn't like something, he turns into a whirling mass of sharp ends.

Here's a video of him being "playful":


This is the cat that stalks dogs. Far from running away, he'll stalk across a garden or try and claw his way through a wire door to attack a dog. This is the cat who once wandered into a neighbour's apartment and ate her goldfish. This is the cat that took a vet and a nurse to take his temperature, the whole time screeching at a high pitch that got higher when the thermometer was inserted!

On the plus side, I'm never worried about him, he had road sense and is clearly perfectly capable of looking after himself.

Anyway, I dropped him off a the vet this morning. They asked if he was on any medication, I said no, but that they should watch out for his temper!

This was good advice.

Apparently they couldn't hold him down to give him an anaesthetic, so they had to pop him into something they called a "gas box"! When I turned up, they asked what he was like with me because "he's been hissing and swiping at us from his cage all day". They were reluctant to approach him, so got me to put him back in his box. As soon as I entered the room, he started meowing plaintively. The staff looked at him, then and me, and said "this is the quietest he's been all day..."

I opened the cage and plucked him out. He started purring loudly! The staff were astonished. I turned around to pop him back in his carry cage, and he caught sight of one of the vet nurses. And started hissing loudly and swiping the air at the same time as purring! Strange cat. I struggled a bit to get him in the box, but I think he realised I was getting him out of there and calmed down.

The Northcote Plaza Veterinary Clinic won't be forgetting his visit for a while!

I should say, he's no more insane than your average cat. Most of the time he's quite affectionate. He didn't have a difficult kittenhood, although apparently he was a manic kitten. It's just his personality, sometimes friendly, sometimes face-rippingly angry! Er, yes, and he may also have made himself unwelcome at several houses where he's gone to stay while we've been on holiday. Anyone want to mind a cat? :-)